Do kids scream more now?

My home overlooks a park and a children's playground is about 200 yards away from my home office desk, where I've sat to work off-and-on for a dozen years. Recently, though, during the day it's gotten to sound like a Chuck E. Cheese greatest hits album: kids screaming at the top of their lungs. I mean, there's not a day goes by that I don't look up to make sure some child is not laying in a crumbled heap at the bottom of the slide, holding a compound fracture (in 12 years, I've called the ambulance but once). Sure, children have always yelled the occasional "mommy, mommy, mommy" in order to show off some fancy flip on the jungle gym. But nowadays it's just non-stop guttural wailing, and it looks from afar as for no reason, punctuated every now and again by the bloody-murder screams.

Am I just becoming a grumpy old man? Is this an indication of the increase in autism in the past decade? Or is something else going on?

My home overlooks a park and a children's playground is about 200 yards away from my home office desk, where I've sat to work off-and-on for a dozen years. Recently, though, during the day it's gotten to sound like a Chuck E. Cheese greatest hits album: kids screaming at the top of their lungs. I mean, there's not a day goes by that I don't look up to make sure some child is not laying in a crumbled heap at the bottom of the slide, holding a compound fracture (in 12 years, I've called the ambulance but once). Sure, children have always yelled the occasional "mommy, mommy, mommy" in order to show off some fancy flip on the jungle gym. But nowadays it's just non-stop guttural wailing, and it looks from afar as for no reason, punctuated every now and again by the bloody-murder screams.

Am I just becoming a grumpy old man? Is this an indication of the increase in autism in the past decade? Or is something else going on?

My home overlooks a park and a children's playground is about 200 yards away from my home office desk, where I've sat to work off-and-on for a dozen years. Recently, though, during the day it's gotten to sound like a Chuck E. Cheese greatest hits album: kids screaming at the top of their lungs. I mean, there's not a day goes by that I don't look up to make sure some child is not laying in a crumbled heap at the bottom of the slide, holding a compound fracture (in 12 years, I've called the ambulance but once). Sure, children have always yelled the occasional "mommy, mommy, mommy" in order to show off some fancy flip on the jungle gym. But nowadays it's just non-stop guttural wailing, and it looks from afar as for no reason, punctuated every now and again by the bloody-murder screams.

Am I just becoming a grumpy old man? Is this an indication of the increase in autism in the past decade? Or is something else going on?

Click to expand...

I think it's from the influx of shitty parenting that we've seen in the last decade ore so. You see a lot of parents who are incapable of, or unwilling to, tell their kids to keep quiet.

I was in the grocery store a couple weeks ago and a kid who was old enough to know better, screamed at the top of his lungs. I dropped the can I was holding and people actually sprinted over to the kid to see if everything was OK. His mom just kind of laughed nervously and walked off... To be fair, I understand not disciplining your kids in public places, but I seriously doubt this mother said anything to her kid.